Albert Maysles Evening in Hollywood
by Andre Soares
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Albert Maysles, 80, will be the featured guest at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film on Thursday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater at the Academy’s Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood. The event will consist of discussions and film clips providing an overview of Maysles’ career and technique.
Dubbed “the dean of documentary filmmakers" by the New York Times, Maysles — along with his brother David (who died in 1987), was among the first to bring the the U.S. cinéma vérité-style nonfiction feature films, i.e., documentaries shot without the use of scripts, sets, interviews, or narration.
Among the Maysles brothers’ films are Meet Marlon Brando, With Love from Truman, Showman (about film producer Joseph E. Levine), Salesman (about door-to-door Bible salesmen), and Gimme Shelter* (about the Rolling Stones‘ 1969 U.S. tour, with special focus on their deadly concert at Altamont, Calif.).
The Maysles’ 1975 documentary Grey Gardens (above), a look at the lives of two eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy, inspired the current Broadway musical.
In 1973, the Maysles received an Oscar nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category for Christo’s Valley Curtain. Eighteen years later, LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton, directed by Albert Maysles, Deborah Dickson, and Susan Frömke, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category. LaLee’s Kin provides a historical context for the widespread poverty among blacks in the Mississippi Delta.
Additionally, Albert Maysles received a Directors Guild of America nomination and an Emmy win for the 1991 documentary Soldiers of Music. (Maysles shared the recognition with Susan Frömke, Bob Eisenhardt, and Peter Gelb.) The film, shot by Maysles, Wolfgang Becker, Edward Lachman, and Martin Schaer, also won the cinematography prize at that year’s Sundance Film Festival.
As per the Academy’s press release, the John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film "is a series named to honor Huston’s legacy as witnessed in his controversial World War II documentaries Report from the Aleutians, The Battle of San Pietro, and Let There Be Light. The Battle of San Pietro was not shown publicly until 1945, when General George Marshall removed its ‘classified’ status. Let There Be Light was banned for decades by the U.S. War Department, the very agency that commissioned it, before it was finally released in 1980."
Tickets to “An Evening with Albert Maysles” are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. All seating is unreserved.
The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at 1313 North Vine Street in Hollywood. Free parking is available through the entrance on Homewood Avenue. For more information, call (310) 247-3600.
* According to the IMDb, Charlotte Zwerin was a co-director.
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